Housing and the quiet revolution
Last week the Government's Housing Finance Bill became law. Its purpose is to alter the system of housing subsidies so that tenants, rather than buildings, are subsidised. The Act endeavours to impose a system of 'fair rents ', broadly in line with what people can afford to pay; and among its objectives, it seeks to aid poorer tenants, and to finance slum clearance and rehabilitation, not from general taxation, but from the profits of rents in the more prosperous areas; and to extend the rent rebate system to tenants in privately owned accommodation, both furnished and unfurnished. It sounds fair and reasonable enough. Yet the Labour Party in Parliament opposed the Bill root and branch. At least twenty-three Labour councils have announced their intention not to implement the Act; and perhaps seventy more (out of a national total of 1,480 local authorities) will strive to defeat its purpose by methods involving something less than a total refusal to co-operate. Anticipating such opposition, the Government inserted in the Bill provisions for compelling the compliance of local authorities. Councillors may be held personally responsible for any loss the national housing funds suffers through a corporate refusal to obey the act; and the Government can even appoint Housing Commissioners to take over the running of local authority housing. Battle is joined, then, once more, between the doctrines of the `quiet revolution' and the commitment of the Labour Party to the welfare politics of the status quo ante.
We are, it seems, back at the point when the Industrial Relations Act became law, and a battle of principle was joined between Government and Opposition. This time, however, the Government has decided to play the matter softly. Mr Walker has allowed a number of councils to reduce the statutorily imposed level of increase; and, in a recent letter to Camden Borough Council the Secretary of State has emphasised the generous subsidies which depressed areas of London will receive, rather than the penalties councillors c'ould suffer if they refused to comply. We have argued that the Government was foolish not to anticipate the difficulties its Industrial Relations Act would meet; and we have regretted its early refusal to compromise in its administration. Nonetheless it is deeply to be regretted that Mr Walker is not prepared to fight for his Housing Finance Act. For all its faults — and some are serious —it is basically an admirable piece of legislation, which goes much further in the direction of even-handed social justice between tenants in all income brackets than anything any Labour administration has ever attempted to put on the statute book. If it is right that people should pay for housing according to their means, then surely it is right that the more prosperous parts of the country should subsidise the poorer; that houses should be built for people, and according to the needs and means of people, rather than according to some abstract design or impulse; and, when money is short, and housing needs great, that the available resources should be deployed as efficiently as possible.
Consequently, we should look carefully at the Labour Party's objections to the Act. The first, and most pressing, objection is purely political. All — or almost all — rents will rise under the Act. The Government has been disingenuous in emphasising the general rebates without pointing out that these will be rebates on higher rents than at present: the Labour Party has hammered away at this point, in its natural and human desire to be against higher rents. The Labour Party also believes, as a matter of principle, that as much housing and house-building as possible should be in the public sector — its new policy document stresses this, and goes so far as to hint at nationalisation of the building industry — and it claims to be totally opposed to the elaborate system of means-testing which the new Act involves, both as a matter of principle and as a matter of politics.
There is no doubt that the administration of the rebate system will be elaborate, complicated, and, possibly, unmanageable. Moreover, as income goes up rebates will go down, and many families will be caught in ,a poverty trap which ensures that, even with harder work and more earnings, there will be no material real increase in their standard of living. Further, the necessity to apply to the local council for rent rebates will add one more to the number of offices the poor beneficiaries will have to visit to obtain different welfare benefits. Often a family will have to attend several different places to sort out their entitlement to, and get their, supplementary benefits, family income supplement, rent rebates, free prescriptions, free school meals and other benefits. Many will be incapable of finding their way through the jungle; some will drop out.
A multitude of small tragedies and hardships will be involved. This is confusing, because the whole intention of Mr Heath's 'quiet revolution' in general—and of the Housing Act in part'. altar which is so important a part of that revolution — has been to help the individual, to encourage him and give him heart, to free him from the tangled undergrowth of bureaucracy and its pressures, and to give him a sense of his ovvn identity. In many respects the failure of the Government to achieve — or even to look like achieving — this overall aim, is its most important failure. Freedom, it sometimes seems, is to be established only through more controls, more bureau' cracy. There is one small light on the horizon. The forthcoming tax credit scheme, if it works, will put together benefits received from, and obligations owed to, the state in one simply' fled system, with one means test. In effect this will be a starting point on the road to a negative income tax, in which the Inland Revenue, in an anonymous, efficient and impersonal fashion, and avoiding the humiliations and complications of individual applications for benefit, will administer the whole structure of taxation and benefit from the information on single tax form. Sir Keith Joseph has already experimentec! with a scheme of this kind with his passport to welfare. (which ensures that those in receipt of certain benefits automatically receive others). The Government must n0 push on fast with tax credits, and with the Select Committe.e on negative income tax, if the Eocial philosophy residing 111 its Housing Finance Act is to become more amply justified.
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